"For the Freedom of the Race": Black Women and the Practices of Nationalism, 1929-1945

"For the Freedom of the Race" examines how a vanguard of nationalist women leaders--Amy Jacques Garvey, Maymie De Mena, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Ethel M. Collins, Ethel Waddell, and Celia Jane Allen, among them--engaged in national and global politics during the 1930s and 1940s. With the effective collapse of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)--the dominant black nationalist organization in the United States and worldwide in the immediate post-World War I era--these women leaders emerged on the local, national, and international scenes, at once drawing on Garveyism and extending it. As pragmatic activists, nationalist women formulated their own political ideas and praxis. They employed multiple protest strategies and tactics (including grassroots organizing, legislative lobbying, letter-writing campaigns, and militant protest); combined numerous religious and political ideologies (such as Freemasonry, Ethiopianism, Pan-Africanism, and Islam); and forged unlikely alliances--with Japanese activists, for instance--in their struggles against racism, sexism, colonialism, and imperialism. Drawing upon an extensive evidentiary base of primary sources including archival material, historical newspapers, and government records, my study reclaims the Great Depression and World War II as watershed moments in the history of black nationalism and sheds new light on the underappreciated importance of women in shaping black nationalist and internationalist movements and discourses during this period

Biden’s Big Night with Moderates, African Americans and Baby Boomers

Editor’s note: With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination narrowed to two front-runners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, six states went to the polls on March 10: Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington. We asked three scholars to examine the primary results

Interview on the #Charlestonsyllabus

In this interiew, the three history professors who started the #CharlestonSyllabus Twitter hashtag--Chad Williams, Keisha N. Blain, and Kidada Williams--discuss the significance of the reading list and subsequent book for educators and members of the general public